Having A Great Dad Probably Permitted Me

People Who Didn't Live Pre-internet Can't Grasp How Devoid Of Ideas Life In My Hometown Was. I Stopped In The Middle Of The Sat To Memorize A Poem, Because I Thought, This Is A Great Work Of Art And I'll Never See It Again.

It Turned Out To Be Impossible For Me To 'run Away' In The Sense Other American Teenagers Did. Any Movement At All Was Taken For Progress In My Family.

I Kept The Fingers Of My Left Hand Crossed All The Time, While On My Right-hand Fingers I Counted Anything At All—steps To The Refrigerator, Seconds On The Clock, Words In A Sentence—to Keep My Head Occupied. The Counting Felt Like Something To Hang On To, As If Finding The Right Numbers Might Somehow Crack The Code On Whatever System Ran The Slippery Universe We Were Moving Through.

I Get So Lonely Sometimes, I Could Put A Box On My Head And Mail Myself To A Stranger.

Childhood Was Terrifying For Me. A Kid Has No Control. You’re Three Feet Tall, Flat Broke, Unemployed, And Illiterate. Terror Snaps You Awake. You Pay Keen Attention. People Can Just Pick You Up And Move You And Put You Down.